About

Educated at Oxford (as an undergraduate and postgraduate) I taught at the University of Leeds and for the Open University before coming to Roehampton in 1989. I specialise in literature and culture of the Romantic period, writing in particular on Blake's visual and verbal texts. My recent monograph, Blake, Sexuality and Bourgeois Politeness was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011.

Current Research

My new project develops from work on Martin Madan and Hannah More in Blake, Sexuality and Bourgeois Politeness and focusses on the politics of the population debate in the years before and after Malthus. Framing this work is an interest in debates about population from the late eighteenth century to the present day.

I am also working on Romantic illustration and the effects of scale.

Research Interests

William Blake; Visual and verbal text; visual arts and public culture in the Romantic period; literature and the Bible; philanthropy and the politics of fertility,especially Jonas Hanway and Hannah More ; the twentieth century reception of William Blake; the artist's book; annotation and marginalia; cultural representations of prostitution; literature and disease; representations of pregnancy and birth; Joanna Southcott; the graphic novel.

I welcome applications from Phd candidates working in any of these specialist areas. I have supervised Phds on William Blake and gender; Margaret Atwood; and am currently supervising students working on The Spectator in its European context, and fear of childbirth in the Romantic period.

Forthcoming publications

I have three essays forthcoming early in 2012:

‘“Mad Misrule”: The Gordon riots and Conservative Memory’in ed. Ian Haywood and John Seed, The Gordon Riots: politics, culture and insurrection in late eighteenth-century Britain Cambridge University Press, 2012

''And did those feet?' Blake and the artist in post-war Britain.'in ed.Steve Clark, Tristanne Connolly and Jason Whittaker, Blake 2.0 Palgrave Macmillan 2012.

'Blake's Malkin' in Re-interpreting Blake ed. Mark Crosby, Troy Patenaude and Angus Whitehead, Palgrave Macmillan 2012.

Selected Publications

Online articles

'An alternative national gallery: Blake’s 1809 Exhibition and the attack on Evangelical culture', Tate Papers ed. Martin Myrone and David Blayney Brown.

'"Happy Copulation": Blake, visual enthusiasm and gallery culture' Romanticism on the Net, Romantic Spectacle 46, May 2007, guest-edited by John Halliwell and Ian Haywood

Chapters in Books

'Hayley on his Toilette': Blake, Hayley and Homophobia, pp209-220 in ed. Helen P.Bruder and Tristanne Connolly, Queer Blake Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

'The Surprising Success of Dr Armstrong', p193-207 in ed. Steve Clark and Tristanne Connolly,Liberating Romantic Medicine, Pickering and Chatto, 2009

'Impurity of Diction: The 'Harlots curse' and dirty words', in ed. Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee, Blake and Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

'Fit audience tho' many': Pullman’s Blake and the anxiety of popularity, p205-224 in Blake, Modernity and Popular Culture, ed. Steve Clark and Jason Whittaker, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

'Africa and Utopia: Refusing a local habitation', p104-120 in The Reception of Blake in the Orient, ed. Steve Clark and Masashi Suzuki, London: Continuum, 2006.

'Blake, Hayley and the History of Sexuality', p83-101 in Blake, Nation and Empire ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

'Rouzing the Faculties to Act': Pullman's Blake for Children', p125-134 in His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Philip Pullman's Trilogy, ed. Millicent Lenz and Carole Scott, Wayne State University Press, 2005.

'Fiction of the Romantic Period', p298-314 in The Romantic Period: A Bibliographical Guide ed. Michael O'Neill, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

'Gender', p150-181 in Romantic Period Writings 1798-1832: an Anthology, ed. Zachary Leader and Ian Haywood, London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

'Women Writers and Readers', in Romantic Writings ed. Stephen Bygrave, London: Routledge, 1996.

'Jerusalem and Nationalism', p79-100 in Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to texts and contexts 1780-1832 ed. Stephen Copley and John Whale, London: Routledge, 1992. Reprinted p80-100 in Blakeed. John Lucas, Harlow: Longman, 1998.

‘Matter too Soft: Pope and the Women’s Novel’ in Pope: New Contexts ed. David Fairer, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990